Pattani, Thailand  - A clash between Thai authorities and suspected separatists and attacks on civilians claimed five dead Monday in Thailand's troubled deep-South, where train travel has been temporarily disrupted because of the growing violence.

Early Monday morning a joint patrol of police and soldiers was ambushed on the road to Bannang Sata district, 780 kilometres south of Bangkok, sparking a five-minute gunbattle.

The shootout left three insurgents dead. Their bodies were found about 100 metres from the village, said Bannang Sata Police Colonel Sompien Todsomya.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Pattani province, suspected separatists on Monday shot dead a rubber merchant in Panare district, and villagers discovered the corpse of an unknown man in Yarang, believed to be another victim of violence.

Over the weekend, insurgents wearing military fatigues boarded a government train in Yala, shooting dead three railways employees and one policeman.

Train service in the deep South, including Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, was suspended Monday because of Saturday's attack.

"Troops have been under a lot of pressure by authorities to perform down here, which always leads to more acts of revenge by the insurgents," said Sompien.

An estimated 2,700 people have died from an increasingly bloody separatist struggle in Thailand's deep South over the past three and a half years.

More than 80 per cent of the three provinces' 2 million people are Muslims, making the region an anomaly in predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

A separatist struggle has simmered in the area for decades, but took a turn for the worse in January 2004 when Muslim militants attacked an Army depot and stole 300 weapons, prompting a crackdown that further inflamed the local population against the government. (dpa)